Born in Holland in 1959 Erwin Olaf is one of the most innovative artists currently working in the field of photography. He has held important solo exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, at the Groninger Museum in Holland, at the Frankfurter Kunsteverein and at the Ludwig Museum in Germany, at Paris Photo, at the Flatland Gallery in Utrecht, at the Wessel O’Connor in New York, at the Espacio Minimo of Madrid and numerous others. In 1988 he won the award Young European Photographers in Germany, in 1998 the Silver Lion at Cannes for the Diesel advertising campaign and again in 2001 for the Heineken advertising campaign. One of his photos was chosen as the poster for the 2001 Valencia Biennial. Next September 2003 the Groninger Museum will inaugurate a major retrospective on 25 years of his work. Il Man presents the complete series of: Paradise The Club, Paradise Portrait, Mature, Royal Blood, a selection from Fashion Victims, Blacks and Body Parts for a total of 48 photographs as well as the videos Tadzio, Millennium and Clowns, thanks to Studio Erwin Olaf , at the Espacio Minimo Gallery and at the B&D Gallery.
Olaf’s works are characterized by a sense of humor and by the constant allusion to images from the world of art and subculture, by reference to the setting of pornographic photography, advertising and fashion to which he gives a disturbing and captivating imprint. In his latest series, Olaf delves into the heart and soul of beauty, ridicules contemporary views on eroticism, and analyzes many uncomfortable ideas such as pornography as folklore, acrobatic sex as comical liberation, and rape as family entertainment and mischievous pleasure.
The Royal Blood series presents the story as a crime story. In his historical research Olaf selects nine stars of violent melodrama. In these portraits the characters, with their red-rimmed eyes, stare at the viewer with a cursed expression of accusation and condemnation. Lady D, with the Mercedes emblem on her arm, Poppea killed in childbirth, Princess Sissi, her son Ludwig, Tsarina Alessandra, Cesare, Marie Antoinette.
In the Mature series Olaf reveals the imperfect beauty of sexy pensioners as pin-ups by making fun of their young counterparts. In Fashion Victims the models are essentially sexual objects. Olaf says: “I’ve always tried to be ironic about beauty to try to offer a new perspective on the whole stupid, overvalued fashion industry.” In the Blacks series, classic portraits revisited in black, Olaf experiments with monochrome with black (painted) models on completely black backgrounds.
Olaf for the Paradise series is based on both Hippodamia rat by Rubens, a disturbing scene of violence and lasciviousness, and “about the horror and decadence of the nightlife of the Paradise in Amsterdam nightclub parties”. In this series, diabolical clowns are the emotionally corrupt actors of a seemingly fantastic scene. Olaf defines this series as “A terrible nightmare where clowns are the bad guys. Everyone, whether they are passive, violent or mocking, is guilty”, their figures pure caricatures, lucid allegories that “represent anonymity and anger and even if they want to entertain children, they are scary”. The images refer to the so-called clown case, an episode that occurred in Holland in the late 1980s. Many local children suddenly claimed that they had been molested by a clown. The police questioned hundreds of people, but nothing was ever confirmed. No suspicious clowns were found. Several psychologists believed they were dealing with an intriguing case of mass youth hysteria, but it has never been established whether it was actually a case of abuse.
In Booby-trap, an exhibition that is a sort of trap that takes the viewer by surprise, Erwin Olaf’s exercise of irony apparently says less than he thinks, as he unmasks unfounded ideas and pushes himself into criticizing those who think that “the world has become a fairy tale”.
Edited by Francesca Alfano Miglietti_Cristiana Collu
